1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to a liquid detection unit that is, for example, suitable for an ink cartridge, or the like, used for a printer, a liquid container that uses the liquid detection unit, and a method of manufacturing and method of disassembling a liquid container.
2. Related Art
In an existing art, ink jet printers serve as liquid ejecting apparatuses that eject liquid droplets from nozzles of liquid ejecting heads. Some ink jet printers include an off-carriage type ink supply system in which an ink cartridge is mounted at a position other than a carriage. The case in which this off-carriage type ink supply system is provided includes a case in which a large capacity ink cartridge is provided for large-sized print, a case in which the size of a carriage is reduced without mounting an ink cartridge and thereby an ink jet printer is made compact and slim, and the like. An ink detection unit is generally mounted on an ink cartridge for detecting the residual amount of ink. The off-carriage type ink cartridge is, for example, described in JP-A-2002-19136.
The ink detection unit includes a sensor, such as a piezoelectric element, and an electrical signal detected by the sensor is stored in a storage element on a circuit board that is mounted on the ink cartridge. A terminal on the ink detection unit side is elastically in contact with a fixed contact on the circuit board in order to maintain reliable electrical connection therebetween.
Therefore, in order to attach or detach the ink detection unit to or from the ink cartridge, both the connection between an ink containing package, which is accommodated in the ink cartridge, and the ink detection unit and the elastic connection between the fixed contact on the circuit board and the terminal on the ink detection unit side need to be considered, so that there has been a need for a simple mechanism.